THE PROBLEM: Puppy mills are an urgent, widespread problem.

In these mass-production factories, mill proprietors force dogs to produce litter after litter of puppies in awful conditions. Because of this, they frequently suffer many social, emotional, and physical conditions, including genetic disorders and deformities. For animal advocates, dog lovers, and anyone at who wants to stop needless cruelty to animals, puppy mills are a critical concern.

What Is A Puppy Mill?

A puppy mill is a high-volume commercial breeding facility that prioritizes profit over the well-being of animals. 

In these establishments, dogs, particularly females, are often kept in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions, with minimal or no veterinary care and inadequate nutrition. The purpose of these businesses is the mass production of puppies for sale. The relentless breeding cycle leads to medical and behavioral issues in both parent dogs and their offspring, and the puppies born in these mills are frequently sold to unsuspecting buyers without proper health screenings or vaccinations. Puppy mills prioritize profit over the quality of life for the animals involved, and are most often misleading or deceptive about the cruelty they inflict on the dogs in their care.

  • 10,000 puppy mills in the U.S. alone.

  • nearly 100 percent of the dogs sold in pet stores and directly to consumers online and through newspaper ads come from mills

  • Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of dogs per facility, live in overcrowded and unsanitary cages without sufficient food, water, grooming, socialization, or veterinary care.

Conditions

With roughly 10,000 puppy mills in operation conditions vary, but no puppy mill is a healthy place for an animal. A typical puppy mill operator keeps dogs in small wire hutches inside sheds with no temperature control or outdoors with insufficient protection from harsh natural elements. The dogs are exposed to extreme heat and cold and dangerously high levels of ammonia from urine build-up. Exposure to uric acid burns the skin and paw pads of puppies; and and the resulting ammonia gas causes respiratory distress, as well as damage to the eyes, livers, and other organs.

The wire cage floors are meant to allow feces to drop through, but it falls onto the animals below when cages are stacked. The wire floors painfully irritate the already raw and sensitive feet of the animals. Feces often cakes cages so heavily it becomes the only solid surface on which animals can stand. This is completely at odds with a dog’s natural instinct to live separately from their excrement, but they desperately long to feel the security of solid ground beneath their feet. Dogs in puppy mills are rarely, if ever, released from their cages to exercise or play.

Their imprisonment in cramped cages also causes the urine and feces buildup to severely mat the dogs’ fur. Frequently in a rescue situation, dogs are found so matted that their entire coat must be shaved off. Once shaved, dogs who had first appeared much larger are often revealed to be emaciated. In some cases, their matting and confinement are so extreme that their painful matts become entangled into the wire cage, pinning the dog in one spot.

Overgrown nails are extremely common in puppy mills and can get caught in or grow around the wire and trap a dog to the cage. Nails that are never trimmed or never worn down by walking or running on solid ground often grow back into the skin. This creates an infection that leads to painful suffering and life-threatening medical conditions. It is not unusual to find small collars that have not been changed as dogs have grown or collars that have been fastened so tightly that they have become embedded in a dog’s neck and must be carefully cut out.

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animal protection at animal rescue corps

Fighting for space, food, or other resources is not uncommon in the overcrowded pens, which are often too small for even one dog to be in even for a short time, much less their entire lives. The dogs spend most of their time unattended; thus fighting goes unnoticed and injuries are often untreated. It is not uncommon to find living animals contained with the remains of deceased animals at a puppy mill. Some dogs endure a process called “debarking” – having portions of their vocal chords painfully removed to reduce the noise of their incessant pleas for help and attention.

Dogs also endure injuries from their dilapidated enclosures. Unsanitary living conditions attract bugs and rodents and breed infectious diseases. The sick and injured dogs are rarely, if ever, seen by a veterinarian, so completely preventable and treatable conditions often result in extreme suffering and eventual death. The health of a puppy mill dog often is not even sustained by adequate food and water. If there is water at all, it is typically filthy and contaminated with algae growth, urine, and feces. Any food present is often infested with maggots and mold.

Some puppy mills keep dogs in windowless breeding boxes, which are typically smaller than the main cages. Here, mother dogs give birth and live with their puppies through the weaning process, which is usually prematurely forced while the puppies should still be drinking their mother’s milk. This early weaning causes emotional trauma to both the mother dog and the puppies as well as health problems in the puppies.

Females are bred repeatedly, usually twice a year, every year, until they can no longer produce puppies. This is incredibly stressful on their bodies but they are only valued as money-making machines, as disposable property, not as individuals with inherent worth. Female dogs are commonly bred before it is safe to do so because the earlier they start, the more puppies they will produce in a lifetime. Puppy mill breeding dogs are often given hormones and steroids to try and increase the number of puppies they produce. These drugs can cause extreme pain and serious side effects – all in an attempt to increase the number of puppies for profit.

When the breeding adults’ bodies can no longer maintain a high level of productivity, they are destroyed or discarded. Puppy millers are no longer profiting from these animals, so they dispose of them in the cheapest way possible. In some cases, they do this themselves by starving, drowning, shooting, beating, or burying the dogs alive.

The offspring of breeding dogs are expensive to keep and dollars are to be made, not spent, so puppies are taken from their nursing mothers as soon as they can be weaned, sometimes before. These puppies not only miss the critical social learning skills that are essential to healthy canine relationships but they have often inherited problematic medical conditions from their parents. If the puppy miller fails to sell puppies before they become adults, they face uncertain outcomes including being killed or dumped, and perhaps worse for the females – becoming additional “breeding stock”.

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Dogs are euthanized in shelters each year.
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Puppies are sold by U.S. puppy mills each year.
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Puppies die in mills before they are ever sold.
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Dogs are confined in mills for breeding purposes.

If they are so bad, why do so many puppy mills exist?

While some tiny percentage of millers operate their businesses for the love of a specific breed, the vast majority are simply trying to make a profit and often jump on an opportunity to profit of the latest popular breed. When that breed then become oversaturated and ends up filling shelters, they are forced to either close or move on to the next ‘fad breed.’ The dogs they bred before, no longer profitable, end up in neglected, filling shelters, or killed or dumped.

Even after that, puppy mills often do not provide the easy profits that many millers imagine and expect. And if those millers were to provide adequate medical care, enrichment, and protection to the animals they use for profit, there would be less profits, or none at all.  To increase profits, millers cut costs. Cutting costs creates situations of inevitable cruelty. Cruelty is inherent to the “business.”

Mill owners increasingly advertise and sell through the internet and newspapers, misrepresenting themselves as a reputable business. Their websites  picture happy dogs romping in the grass or cuddling with children and puppies piled in baskets or on colorful blankets. Yet the unseen reality for the dogs is almost always a deplorable prison that forbids them any natural behaviors, depriving them of any joy and often even basic sustenance. When mill owners sell in-person they usually meet the customer somewhere away from their property. They almost never let customers see where the puppy lived and where the parents are still suffering.

Anyone can claim they are an “ethical breeder” — unless you see it don’t believe it

Due to the awful conditions mill puppies were born into and forced to endure, unsuspecting consumers are often buying sick puppies and will incur expensive veterinary bills trying to treat immediate health problems, such as parvovirus or genetic problems that reveal themselves years later. Like the many puppies that do not survive the conditions in the mill, heartbreakingly some of the purchased puppies do not survive long after being purchased, and some that do are surrendered into the overburdened shelter system because the purchasers were not prepared or cannot afford to address their medical needs.

A lack of adequate legal regulation allows puppy mills to proliferate. Federal law does nothing to regulate breeders who sell puppies directly to the public. While cruelty and neglect laws usually require adequate food, water, shelter, and veterinary care for sick animals, the standards are often undefined or inadequate, and with puppy mills often undetected and hidden in rural areas, even these protections go unenforced.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the federal organization charged with enforcing the Animal Welfare Act, which sets basic standards of care for certain kinds of animals bred for commercial resale. The USDA admits to a deficient and problematic record in the inspection of dog breeding facilities. There are a greater number of facilities than the number of inspectors to visit these facilities. Oftentimes, breeders are allowed to perform self-inspections. In May 2010, the USDA’s Inspector General issued a scathing 69-page report addressing failures in inspection practices. And of the more than 10,000 mill facilities in the United States, fewer than 3,000 are regulated by the USDA.

It’s better than nothing, but it isn’t enough.

Where are Mill Puppies Sold?

  • Pet Stores

  • Newspapers

  • Flea Markets

  • Websites

Learn More About Puppy Mills

ARC’s work

Animal Rescue Corps protects dogs, cats, and other domesticated animals across North America and beyond through large-scale Emergency Animal Rescue & Disaster Response, Shelter Relief, and Education & Training. This important work often includes protecting the vulnerable animals trapped in puppy mills. See more about how ARC helps here and how you can help here. 

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PUPPY MILLS: SEE HOW ARC HELPS

PUPPY MILLS: SEE HOW YOU CAN HELP